


You Survive

by cestmabiologie



Series: [prompted.] [4]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Gen, angsty as heck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 23:22:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5804263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cestmabiologie/pseuds/cestmabiologie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prompt: sarah manning + xeranthemum</p>
<p>xeranthemum = eternity, immortality</p>
<p>"You survive, she’d said. But Cosima couldn’t have known.</p>
<p>That changed the game completely."</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Survive

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: blood, body trauma, body horror

 

“You survive,” Cosima had told her, lacing her fingers through Sarah’s. Holding Cosima’s hand had been like holding her own. It gave the same warmth. If she’d believed in palmistry or some such shite she might have searched Cosima’s hands then and there. See how her life lines matched up. How they deviated. Science or no, Cosima would’ve been into it, would’ve traced her fingertips feather-light along the creases of their palms.

_You survive_ , she’d said. But Cosima couldn’t have known.

The Castor infection had only been the beginning (or it had always been there    hadn’t it). Then there’d been an accident: the car hood crumpled, the windshield shattered, and Sarah, trapped and bleeding and taking hummingbird breaths through broken ribs.

_She shouldn’t have survived_ , the doctors had said to each other, sure that she couldn’t hear. They were impressed (they were horrified) by the damage that her body had endured.  She had watched it all from outside of herself, and she felt it.  A last scrap of life clung desperately to her broken body and refused to let her leave.

And that changed the game completely.

The next time she was trapped, she didn’t feel the same wild animal urge to run. She waited. She fought. The next time a gun was pointed at her, she wasn’t afraid. And when she was shot

it hurt (fuck it fucking hurt) and she’d passed out from the pain

from the shock

from the blood loss

and they’d left her for dead but

she’d survived.

(She scarred, and she had to remind herself this. She healed slowly, so slowly, and she had to remind herself this. Still, she forgot or, rather, she ignored.)

She never told the others. They wouldn’t understand the risks that she took for them, the choices she’d made (to protect them   to get answers   to test the limits of her body). She didn’t tell Helena (she remembered the torture   the gunshot   the rebar) because the consequences of knowing would be too great.

And Kira.

She hoped that Kira would make better choices.


End file.
